


Guardians of the Gate

by The_Buzz



Series: Advent Calendar [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale and Gadreel guarded the gate together, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Good Omens and Supernatural happen in the same universe, Pre-series/Season 9, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 14:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5748517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Buzz/pseuds/The_Buzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale has been visiting Gadreel in prison for millennia. They'd guarded the gate together, after all, so it seems the right thing to do. His kindness comes back to bite him, however, when Gadreel gets free and goes after the only angel who still recognizes his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guardians of the Gate

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series of prompts that I filled leading up to the holidays as a present for a friend (hence, the "Advent Calendar" series). The prompt for this story was: Gadreel and Aziraphale talk about the Garden of Eden.

Crowley and Aziraphale stood on the bank of the Thames in St James’s Park, a chilly wind whipping around him. Aziraphale stuck his chin further into his oversized tartan scarf and tossed the last heel of bread to the ducks. Crowley, hunched over, his hands jammed into his pockets, watched a couple of ducks start fighting over it but didn’t bother to sink any of them.

“That’s it then, isn’t it?” Crowley said, a tad impatiently. “Let’s go back. Lunch, maybe? I hear there’s a great place just opened, with these fantastic little cakes…”

He trailed off, because Aziraphale was looking at him with the sort of apologetic expression that always preceded bad news. “I’m terribly sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “I’ve actually got to go. Bit of an errand to run, I suppose.”

“Errand?” Crowley sounded deeply suspicious. “But I just did your good deed for you, when I was in Surrey resetting the traffic lights.” (He’d reset them to inconvenience the greatest number of people, not to cause any major crashes, he’d told Aziraphale proudly. Crashes bred sympathy and goodwill and so on.) “I had them deliver the puppies to the orphanage, remember?”

“Yes, I know, dear, very good,” Aziraphale said, glancing at his watch. “But I’m afraid this isn’t work. It’s rather something I’ve been putting off.”

“What is it?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale bit his lip. “It’s not important. I’ll be back, oh, well, I don’t suppose it will take too long. It’s an errand, like I said.”

“Oh,” Crowley shrugs, staring out at the ducks again as a brisk wind pressed against the both of them. “Okay, then.”

“We might get little cakes another time,” Aziraphale added. “You know how much I like them.”

Crowley grunted vaguely in return. Aziraphale took that as a yes, and headed back to his bookshop. Though this was far from the first time he’d done this—it might’ve been the hundredth—he found he was harboring a nervous feeling somewhere in his gut that not even the promise of little cakes with Crowley could make disappear.

In the back room of the shop, Aziraphale lit some incense, set up the materials to make the gate, chanted a few words, and stepped back as the pillar of golden light opened up in the floor. He carefully left his physical body on a chair (the last thing he wanted was to lose it and have to ask for a new one), and rode the pillar all the way Upstairs.

It spat him out, as it usually did, in the garden, and he hastily reassembled himself. He _was_ allowed to be here, of course, but his presence in Heaven always raised questions. If he could avoid encountering Joshua, he would certainly prefer it.

Once out of the garden, he made his way through several labyrinthine hallways that snaked around the human heavens, then down into the lower levels—the offices, the “reprogramming” chambers, and other places he’d always liked to avoid—and then further down still, into the very bowels of Heaven. He’d passed several other angels on his way, but down here, there was nothing but the sound of his own (very nice, or so Crowley informed him, Italian leather) heels clacking on the floor. A floor that transitioned seamlessly, in the dreamlike way that Heaven had sometimes, from businesslike linoleum to large marble flags. The upper parts of Heaven had been redecorated over the years. This part hadn’t.

He walked for what felt like years, and might have been, until he reached the cells.

Or rather, one cell. Though the grate was ostensibly made of metal bars, Aziraphale knew that in reality it was protected by an energy barrier to powerful that even an angel could not cross it without being disintegrated.

The figure inside stood up slowly, then turned to face him. “Aziraphale,” he said stiffly. “I had been unsure you would return.”

“Gadreel. I’m terribly sorry,” Aziraphale said, the nervousness in his gut rising suddenly. “The twentieth century was rather busy for me, and then we nearly had the apocalypse, and it was always very hard to find the time. Even now, I’ve had to—” he cleared his throat, deciding that bringing up Crowley was probably not the best of ideas. “In any case, please do accept my apologies.”

Gadreel studied him for a few seconds. It was usually the case, when Aziraphale came to visit him, that the other angel moved and spoke at a molasses pace for the first several minutes. “I do,” Gadreel said eventually. “Tell me. What news from below?”

Aziraphale sighed, and began recounting the major events on Earth since his last visit, which he’d realized guiltily hadn’t been since the nineteenth century, during Crowley’s long nap. He finished his tale by describing the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, including his and Crowley’s roles.

Gadreel said, after a few moments, “I would be surprised that Heaven did not see fit to punish you for your actions. However, it seems clear that you have always been a favorite.”

“It was because of Adam,” Aziraphale insisted blandly. They almost never talked about the respective roles in the fall of Man, but he was sensing that such a conversation might be unavoidable now. “This time. The last time, the difference was in our infractions.”

“We were both guardians of the Gate,” Gadreel recalled. “Together, we guarded it. Father’s first creation. I allowed the snake into the Garden, letting the humans have knowledge. You failed to notice the snake, but gave the humans your sword. I was locked away. You were sent to Earth.”

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale said. “And this isn’t to say that I agree completely with their reasoning. Even Back Then I had doubts about whether knowledge mightn’t be a good thing to have, and the world has certainly developed beautifully since you’ve been, er, here…” he trailed off awkwardly as Gadreel’s face settled into a particularly unhappy position. “My only point is, er, was, that allowing knowledge into the Garden _is_ different from giving the humans the sword once they had the knowledge. They were already out in the cold, the poor dears.”

“I gave them knowledge. You gave them power,” Gadreel said. “What do you think they would be, today, had you not done so?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, thinking of all the wonderful things in the world that Gadreel has never seen. “I imagine it would be a lot like the garden in our days. Only, they’d be somewhere else, running about and foraging for food.”

“And yet, my crime carried the greater punishment,” Gadreel said.

“I suppose it’s not really fair, is it,” Aziraphale allowed.

Gadreel shook his head solemnly. “It was not.”

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale said. “I am sorry, you know. About what happened.”

They stood for a few moments in silence.

“Do you remember the Garden?” Gadreel asked.

“Of course,” Aziraphale said. If he concentrated, he could recall the lush greenness of it, the brilliance of the flowers and fruits, and of course the long hours of guard duty with Gadreel by his side. That, he recalled, had been after Crowley’s fall but far before they’d really become anything resembling friends again, let alone had cultivated the deep and enduring friendship he fancied they had now. In those days, Gadreel had been his best and only companion. The Garden itself, well, it had been a nice enough garden, but in Aziraphale’s opinion it somewhat paled in comparison to the wonder of several of humanity’s subsequent achievements. God simply didn’t have the same knack for landscaping.

“It is the last place I saw before I was put in this cell,” Gadreel said. “I remember every tree. Every petal. Every insect. When I am alone, I picture it. It was the most beautiful thing I could imagine.”

“I’m sorry, you know,” Aziraphale said, momentarily shocked by the horror of that thought. Being trapped for so long, with nothing to do but to picture a single place that, in Aziraphale’s opinion didn’t quite live up to its hype—it was dreadfully sad. “When I told them that the serpent had gotten in, I’d never imagined…never realized that this would happen. Even though I suspected it had been your doing, I never…oh…I never imagined this.”

Gadreel didn’t say anything at first. Then after a while. Finally, when Aziraphale was beginning to wonder if he should speak again, he said, “I understand. But I have been locked away since the Beginning and see no way out. You are kind to me now, Aziraphale, but I cannot accept your apology.”

Aziraphale nodded. He supposed it only made sense.

“I would do anything to be free of my bars,” Gadreel added. Now that he’d begun, he seemed to find it difficult to stop. “Anything.”

“Anything,” Aziraphale echoed, and tried to ignore the chill that ran down his spine.

He left a little while later, slunk through Heaven’s many hallways, returned to the book shop, and slid into his body. Several weeks had passed on Earth, but as soon as he called Crowley’s flat, the demon picked up the phone and told him (in a tone that suggested that Crowley was trying very hard to hide his excitement), that yeah, sure, he’d be up for some of those cakes they talked about. As they sat together, laughing and talking and enjoying a variety of little cakes, the chill he’d left Heaven with seemed to fade. He’d done his due diligence in visiting his fellow sentry in Heaven’s prison. Now, he could leave behind the residual guilt and simply enjoy life as he’d been enjoying it for the last hundred years. He would visit Gadreel again…in some time.

The years slid past easily once it was out of his mind again. Twenty years after his visit, another apocalypse nearly erupted, but was thwarted thanks to a couple of Americans and the angel Castiel, who Aziraphale mostly knew by reputation. A few years after that, the very same angel (who, it seemed, was far more of a troublemaker than either he or Gadreel had ever been) caused the very Gates of Heaven to close, and all of the angels fell to Earth. Though Aziraphale didn’t have very far to fall, being already on the Earth, he felt it just the same.

What he hadn’t expected was to see Gadreel again, now that no amount of diagrams, chanting, or pleasant incense could open a gate to Heaven. But see him he did, no more than a few days after the great fall.

Gadreel appeared in his bookshop, wearing the body of a tall man with an angular face much like Gadreel’s own. Aziraphale recognized the body as that of one of the Americans who had stopped the latest Apocalypse.

“Aziraphale,” Gadreel greeted him, towering over him.

“Gadreel, my dear,” Aziraphale said. He found himself wishing absurdly that Crowley was with him.

“Do not use that name!” Gadreel shouted at him, knocking him backward with residual power.

“Very…very well,” Aziraphale said, deeply confused.

“You know who I am,” Gadreel thundered. “You are the only one. You, who guarded the gate of Eden with me, who has come to me countless times over the millennia to speak. Only you know me. Only you can expose me.”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened, but he couldn’t quite think of anything to say.

“I had to freeze time in America and sit inside of an airplane to arrive here without arousing the elder brother’s suspicion,” Gadreel complained. “I cannot permit you to give me away. I _must_ end you.”

“Give you away?” Aziraphale asked, because that part was easier to ask about than the other part. “I don’t understand.”

“I am free, Aziraphale,” Gadreel said. “Because of the fall, I am free. And I will not go back. I have assumed a name, and you are the only angel who can expose me.” He raised a hand to Aziraphale’s head as if to smite him, but it was trembling. Then it dropped.

“I will not give you away,” Aziraphale said.

“You are the only angel who can!” Gadreel said again, then deflated. “But you were also the only angel who remained my friend. Who visited me. I cannot—I will not kill you.”

He turned and headed for the door, leaving Aziraphale a little stunned in his wake. He pivoted in the doorway and added, “Also, I accept your apology. Please accept mine.”

With that, he was gone.

When the news came, nearly a year after that, that Gadreel had destroyed the cells by destroying himself, Aziraphale was saddened but not terribly surprised. _Anything_ , Gadreel had said. _Anything to be free_.

And yet, Aziraphale knew, there had been one thing he hadn’t been willing to do. As he and Crowley stood again on the bank of the Thames, feeding the ducks and contemplating the state of the world (and the odd surge of Americans playing important roles in occult affairs), he wondered what would have happened if Gadreel had never been imprisoned. Whether Gadreel would have enjoyed the world as much as he and Crowley did. Whether they’d still be friends. As Crowley cackled and tossed the last piece of bread to a duck, who (to its surprise) started rising up into the air, he supposed he’d never know.

“Don’t do that, dear.” He sighed and settled the duck back on the water.

“All right, angel?” Crowey asked, noticing his tone.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, then forced a small smile. “Of course. Now, come on, dear boy. Let’s go to lunch.”


End file.
